ABSTRACT
Regardless of how poverty is defi ned, addressing abject poverty has always been one of the ultimate objectives of economic development in developing and developed countries. Being poor is generally defi ned as being deprived of what is required to live a meaningful life. The exact defi nition of poverty has long been debated. The concepts of absolute and relative poverty are often invoked in the relevant literature. But because of the ambiguous nature of these concepts, they often generate controversy and debate. The absolute concept may suggest greater precision and objectivity, while the idea of relativity may convey a sense of subjectivity and arbitrariness. The choice between these concepts would depend partly on the purpose for which the concept is to be used and partly on philosophical and moral considerations. The use of the relative measure can help establish the idea that poverty can exist even in societies with a high mean income. Amartya Sen (1980) invoked the notion of deprivation to capture the essence of an absolute measure of poverty. He accepts that what constitutes “deprivation” may vary from society to society but observes that these variations are matters of objective study. While “low income” may be an indicator of poverty, a target income is not an end in itself but only a means to achieving what Sen (1989) has called “human functioning”. To emphasise the connections between poverty and human functioning, Sen has developed the concept of “capabilities”. To have capability in this sense is to be able to “function” in a chosen way or to have options in a “capabilities set”. In interpreting this concept, Atkinson ( 1995) writes, quoting Sen, that “in the chain Commodities – > Characteristics – > Capabilities – > Utility, it is “the third category – that of the capability to function – that comes closest to the notion of standard of living”, and that, if the argument is accepted, it provides a basis for “sorting out . . . the absolute-relative disputation in the conceptualisation of poverty.
